Monday, October 07, 2013

Listen My Love to How I Sing of You

In This Pilgrim Heart

1 - (listen my love; listen to how this pilgrim heart
sings of you) remember how I had waited for you
on the usual borderlines; waited in line to see if you
would open your doors to me (to join our separate cultures in
familiar though foreign lands) I gave myself to your hands;
and as I passed through your customs; we went through the ritual
of the necessary questions; (you got to do, what you got to do
to weed out the undesirables, I know)

but I showed you my heart is my father, my mother, my child
searching further than the eye can wander; wandering,
wondering of the beholder; waiting for instant connections
to take apart the loneliness, and from the heart's pieces
to put me together again in a theme of sense;
what else did you need to know that you couldn't see?
but that I would wait a lifetime for you;

2 - and though you stripped me down to the bone;
searched me in and out, through and through;
and though you divided me from my belongings,
you saw how I still ached to be united with your home;
for you to flame your torches on your territories and
light the way; to let this pilgrim heart cross over finally,

to sing songs of salvation with you in your land;
to walk hand in hand the empty roads with you;
and burn a fiery trail to ignite the night's scenery;
to trek towards our stars burning bright, piercing
the dark in the other with their light: or to watch together
how our flowers open without the need for sunlight;

and had you refused me, I would have kept on waiting
for you in the neighbouring desert, hoping on hope
until the last for a cure to the thirst; or wishing
for a future with no past, or for a love to outlast;
or to die at last; rather than become a ghost of two,
that would haunt me in my hunger to be with you;

A Minstrel at the Gates

3 - (and you saw this waiting minstrel at the gates)
as I stood in line with my anticipations, dreaming of crossing
your boundaries; you opened the doors suddenly; inviting
this willing guest to explore your country; a simple storyteller
wandering and ready to sing out his short stories
about the epic journeys of you; of the flame that guides
this pilgrim to you; with a faith that defies logic (knowing
there's no trick to the magic when I'm with you)

and how on this personal pilgrimage to you
I see that everything in your country is made from you;
it gives life to its faithful; your earth, sea and sky filled
with beauty: morning is in your eyes; you make the Sun rise
as you wake, and your hands are the dawn; they softly rub away
the night; your daylight is promise of the new, silver-polished white
(I feel like there's nothing I can't do when I am with you)

4 - and your rain is so gentle; it shines satisfied
in the morning; the scent of your dew kissing the day
awake warms all the spaces carved into you; where
I take pleasure in your shade as the rain falls all around,
(your ground isn't a grave, but a cradle, when believers
rest next to you) and your every new day is always full;

the explorer feels beautiful here; your time is greater
here than any fears that might slip into the years;
it slows with each stroke; the minutes sing clearly,
as you pull me through all the doorways and days
of your land; the dust, the soil, the distilled waters
of your country fills my veins; I am drunk with you;

Why I Sing Only of You

5 - (and now this pilgrim heart is devoted only to you)
because the blood flowing in you flows in me, too; for as I explore
further I see why the believers you save fall to their knees
in prayer to you; isn't it piety to be thankful for the fertile lands you
give settlers to pitch their tents to? or to settle down and farm;
if that is the wish of the earth; for the food is plenty,
the sure waters pure; each oasis is an embrace of a limb of life;
a touch of nature from the outside to the within;

like a ray of Sun entering the pores of the skin,
you are in the very lines of the palms of the trees that bloom
with fruits from high: their leaves breathing in your yielding air;
there is a harvest to satisfy all in your country's soil;
where no pilgrim heart ever goes hungry in its soul; and yet
how can I be hungry for more? but this guest wants to be more
than a guest; to give, live and die amongst all the beauty seen;

6 - and you need to know (if you ever deport me back
to the desert of me) how every scent will take me back
to your country; for remembering you is easy;
it is merely a closing of the eyes; a little like death
without the life you give to its every breath;
it is like slowly dying in a disguise of living;

but know this minstrel will continue to sing of you,
not as a guide for others to travel by, or to understand
the land better; or for any listener but you; simply
out of a celebration of loving you; for you to see only
what it meant for me to be with you; and
of all else I shall sing, why I will always sing of you.